Subodh Gupta, an Indian Contemporary Artist

Subodh Gupta, an Indian Contemporary Artist

Subodh Gupta (born in 1964) is an Indian Contemporary artist based in New Delhi. He employs many of the original techniques of French conceptualist Marcel Duchamp by elevating the ready-made into an art object. Gupta chooses signature objects of the Indian sub-continent and relocates them as art objects in monumental installations of stainless steel and tiffin-tins. Spill is an overbearing work of great scale that has at its centre a larger than life stainless steel water vessel, with many smaller steel utensils spilling over the edge like water pouring out.

His work encompasses sculpture, installation, painting, photography, performance and video. He is married to artist Bharti Kher and is represented by Hauser & Wirth and Nature Morte, New Delhi. He lives and works in Gurugram.

Stainless steel and stainless steel utensils

Gupta’s painting Still Steal Steel is a strange juxtaposition of a still life of steel utensils in the fore-ground, with a slightly garish floral design in the background. Gupta employs the effectiveness of a hyper-realist palette that suggests that the objects are more real than reality might allow. Gupta’s configuration of steel utensils along with the introduction of a floral element appears to reference a hierarchy of decorative forms.

Gupta is best known for incorporating everyday objects that are ubiquitous throughout India, such as the steel tiffin boxes used by millions to carry their lunch as well as thali pans, bicycles, and milk pails. From such ordinary items the artist produces sculptures that reflect on the economic transformation of his homeland and which relate to Gupta’s own life and memories. As Gupta says: ‘All these things were part of the way I grew up. They are used in the rituals and ceremonies that were part of my childhood. Indians either remember them from their youth, or they want to remember them.’ And: ‘I am the idol thief. I steal from the drama of Hindu life. And from the kitchen – these pots, they are like stolen gods, smuggled out of the country. Hindu kitchens are as important as prayer rooms.’

Gupta transforms the icons of Indian everyday life into artworks that are readable globally. He is among a generation of young Indian artists whose commentary tells of a country on the move, fuelled by boiling economic growth and a more materialistic mindset. Gupta’s strategy of appropriating everyday objects and turning them into artworks that dissolve their former meaning and function brings him close to artists like Duchamp; The Guardian called him ‘the Damien Hirst of Delhi.’ He succeeds in finding an art language that references India and at the same time can be appreciated for its aesthetic throughout world; as Gupta says: ‘Art language is the same all over the world. Which allows me to be anywhere.’

With Untitled (Pot) Gupta manages to elevate his ready-mades to positions of grandeur. His still-life paintings appear to celebrate objects in space almost as successfully as his ready-mades do. Row upon row of copper based utensils and tiffin-tins hang from a kitchen ceiling. Gupta’s paintings transform the objects to appear more valuable than usual.